


LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING

by ivorygates



Series: Hotel Sex [3]
Category: House M.D., Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-22
Updated: 2009-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:25:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And House went back to work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING

  
_"Look, I can give myself an_  
orgasm. What I can't always do is  
find someone worth a damn to talk  
to."  
\-- [](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/profile)[**researchgrrrl**](http://researchgrrrl.livejournal.com/)  


Dr. Lisa Cuddy is the Head of Administration and Dean of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. She is one of only a handful of women in such a position in the country.

To be young – not yet forty – female, beautiful, and in a position of power, you have to be very good at what you do.

Most of what she does is say 'no.'

_You can't always get what you want._

As the philosopher Jagger once said.  
  
She's known Greg House since they were both young and innocent, assuming the term could ever have been applied to either of them. University of Michigan. He was young and beautiful and as easy to get to know as a reaping machine. She'd been monomaniacally ambitious, impatient with everything but her future. She'd seen it clearly, and knew it wouldn't forgive her a single false step.

They'd met. They'd clashed. Even then she'd had the gift of assessing people. She'd known he was going to be something difficult and amazing. She'd admired him the way you admired tigers or the scope of historical disasters, and took care to avoid all her friends' attempts to throw them together. They'd done it, she suspected, partly for the entertainment value. He'd noticed, and it had amused him.

Thank god the two of them hadn't become lovers.

He graduated, and so did she. Unscathed, more or less.

And years passed.

#

At the top of its game, Medicine is a very small town. Everybody knows everybody else, or at least knows _of_ them. The gossip bandied about at conferences, by email, over coffee in the break room, would put the characters in a Faulkner novel to shame. Whether she wants to or not, Dr. Cuddy always knows where Dr. House is, and what he's doing. The passage of time has not softened either his arrogance or his absolutism, and the years have certainly not taught him tact.

Time has taught Lisa Cuddy many things. The art of the possible. To choose her battles. A thousand ways of saying 'no.' (To take a positive delight in saying 'no', in fact. It's one of the perks of the job.)

And to realize that the Universe has a sly and malicious sense of humor, which is the only possible explanation for its depositing Greg House on her doorstep as her new Chief of Diagnostic Medicine.

Not hire him? Ridiculous. He's brilliant. He's also a childish dysfunctional pain in the ass. She has a dozen carefully-worded letters of recommendation in her possession along with his CV, and twice that number of cautious tactful phone calls – strictly off the record – telling her things she's already heard through the grapevine.

She hires him anyway.

And now it's six years later, and she can add 'drug addict' to the cluster of other warning flags that flutter around him. The legal staff alternately bursts into tears and threatens to quit at the mention of his name. The hospital's insurance premiums … well, she tries not to think about that. She tells herself the high cost of keeping him is offset by the good publicity, the lives saved, the prestige.

He's brilliant.

He's crazy.

He's never boring.

She's become expert at blackmail.

Her ruthlessness surprises her occasionally. They say the qualities of married couples tend to rub off on each other through long association. Her association with House seems to be a one-way transfer of essential qualities. He's never given quarter in any interaction, even those that might properly be considered social. Sometimes she tries to imagine his relationship with Stacy-now-Warner and she simply can't. It's something it's much better not to think about. It leads to wondering about motive. She doesn't spend a lot of time treating patients now, but she did her residency like everyone else, and she knows as well as House does that patients and families hide motive. Even from themselves.

Much better to concentrate on blackmail.

Something House does very well.

But she's better.

She looks down at the print-out on her desk. An expense report, with attached documentation. Last week he went to a Symposium in New York. Exotic Diseases. Appropriate, expected, desirable for the head of Diagnostic Medicine.

It took blackmail, threats, and bribery to get him there.

And now he's submitted his expense report.

The one item - from among all the items of official paperwork required of him by Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital - that House deals with promptly.

Mileage, gasoline, tolls. All padded, but probably not worth arguing about. _Choose your battles._

But then there's the printout from the hotel.

House can be very creative.

More than twelve hundred dollars in Room Service charges, for a three day stay, during which there were luncheons, and a banquet, and dozens of ways for House to avoid paying for his own meals. Her eye drifts down the list of charges. There's a recurring charge of $178.88 that puzzles her for a moment, until she realizes that it must be the in-room cost for a bottle of bourbon, plus a New York hotel's ruinous corkage fees. There are four of them on the bill.

House is not, actually, that heavy a drinker. Vicodin is his constant lover, a steady patter of demure white pills, subsidized by the hospital pharmacy. If there's a small mercy to be seen in any of this, it's that the prescriptions are backchanneled through the Clinic, so he is not, technically, writing himself prescriptions for all that lovely poison. That could be enough to cost him his license. He cares about that.

But he does like a more-than-occasional drink. And he's cheap to the point of ludicrousness.

So. Four bottles of bourbon on the hospital's tab.

$17.50? The cost (per order) of the Pay Per View porn movies he didn't watch. Or did. Over two hundred dollars worth of them. Either the hotel had an excellent selection or he watched - or ordered - several of them more than once.

The rest is almost incidental: a few meals taken in, or at least charged to, his room. Undoubtedly the former, since if he were eating outside his room he wouldn't be eating alone, and if House weren't eating alone, he would certainly find some way to stick someone else with the check.

She has no intention of underwriting a weekend of booze and porno movies at inflated Manhattan prices. Especially since she knows perfectly well that at least three of the four bottles of bourbon have made their way home with him, and that simply rankles. He paid - in a manner of speaking - three times the cost of what he'd be charged anywhere locally for the privilege of sticking it to PPTH.

She doesn't intend to let him.

#

At approximately twenty minutes past the appointed time for their meeting he breezes into her office. Disheveled, unshaven, and – of course – no white lab coat in sight. A typical day at PPTH. His eyes glitter in anticipation of a fight.

"Dr. Cuddy. Always a pleasure to see you and the girls. Or should I say...ladies?"

His eyes are fixed firmly on a point well below her face, his brows arched in a patented House expression: half male appreciation, half bogus shock. He's willing to take the conversation in either direction if she gives him an opening. _Maybe later,_ she thinks to herself. She has no illusions that this will be over quickly.

"Dr. House. I wonder if you have time to go over some of the more, shall we say, _unusual_ charges on your room bill?"

He feigns wariness, but she knows perfectly well he's been anticipating this. Probably since before he left. For someone who is driven to frothing fits of near-hysteria by what he considers the irrelevancies of life – which House considers most human social interactions, and anything not directly related to the practice of Medicine – he seems to have an infinite amount of time to spend babbling to her about utterly irrelevant matters. Usually in an attempt to distract her from something he doesn't want her involved in.

Almost always something to do with her job.

"I always have time for you. Though I hate to point out that I'm due at the clinic in-" he checks his watch ostentatiously "-fifteen minutes. You know how I hate to be late for clinic duty."

A flat lie and they both know it. He considers the clinic a waste of his time and his skills. She'd wonder why he took up the practice of Medicine in the first place, except for the fact that she knows: he loves the puzzles and the challenges. It's the people he can't stand. The human aspect. It's unfortunate that most of Medicine is about people.

Maybe he should have been a cop. She allows herself to be distracted by the fantasy for a few seconds. Unfortunately, they don't allow you to take suspects into the back room and beat confessions out of then any more.

"This won't take long," she says, summoning her mind back to the here-and-now. Wishing, furtively, for her own bright lights and rubber hoses. "You write me a check for-" she checks her calculations again "-$948.52 and we'll call it a day."

"The price of a nooner has gone up," House observes, waggling his eyebrows. He continues to regard the deep V of her pink silk blouse pointedly. "Just put it on my tab." He turns to go.

"I'm not allowing those charges," she says sharply.

"My dear Hospital Administrator-"

"My dear Doctor House."

And it's the end of Round One.

"Stop trying to tower over me. It never works, and you know it."

"Just enjoying the view from here," he says blandly.

He's not bothering with the Shocked Puritan act now, just regarding her breasts as if they only existed for his approval. Of course he is; he's crippled, not dead, and she's never seen any reason to dress like a nun. She's got a damned good body, and sex is just another weapon in her armory. She uses everything she's got to keep PPTH up and running.

But there are some men from whom such an open, obvious, and frankly lecherous appraisal would be annoying. Insulting. Or make her want to take a long hot shower afterward. But no matter what he does – or says – and he can be breathtakingly crude - she never gets the feeling that House doesn't consider her mind a significant part of the attraction.

That's what makes him so dangerous.

Damn the man.

"I wore garters and seamed stockings today just for you. Go sit down. I have the feeling we're going to be a while."

"You're such a tease, Cuddy."

He takes a seat, making a great show of settling himself into the chair. Miming the fact that he's settling in, prepared to give her as much time as she wants for her silly trivial little problem.

There are times when his physical grace in every sphere but one is heartbreaking. She knows those moments of unstudied awkwardness are entirely unconscious, because anything else would seem or even be a solicitation of pity for his maiming. He'll use his infirmity, certainly, bandy the 'cripple card' like a stripper's G-string if he thinks it will get him something he wants. But genuine pity drives him into a towering rage.

But she remembers him from before. Feline grace. An athlete's body. He'd used to run in the mornings.

She crosses her legs, turning toward him.

"A little higher, please," he says.

"You picked the wrong specialty," she says. "You should have gone into Gynecology."

"Thrill of the hunt," he answers.

"I don't suppose you can even begin to attempt to justify these charges," she says, waving the hotel bill at him.

"What fun would that be?" he answers. "You know and I know-"

"$948.52," she says. "PPTH is not paying for you to make whoopee in the big city, House."

He cocks his head and regards her slyly, gazing into her eyes.

"What if I told you they were legitimate professional expenses?" he suggests, smiling faintly. He always does that when he's lying outright.

"Liquor and porno movies?"

"You know what doctors are like."

The smile is broader now.

 

"Intimately," she sighs.

"And we're back to the sex."

He raises his eyebrows again and does his best to look disapproving.

"Speaking of which, the only thing that – somehow – did not make it onto this grossly-padded list of highly fraudulent…"

House is smirking now.

"Don't tell me you got lucky?"

She knows she shouldn't go there, but it's irresistible.

"My dear Dr. Cuddy. I'm not sure I know what you mean," he says primly.

She shakes her head disbelievingly.

"Fine."

She should be grateful that she isn't dealing with several hundred dollars of artfully-disguised charges for call-girls in addition to everything else.

But why not?

Those charges _should_ be there.

They've been there for every other conference. House would no more go to a conference and _not_ put a hooker on his room bill than he would fail to move heaven and earth to diagnose a patient in his care.

Something isn't right here.

"You met a beautiful young stewardess who threw herself at you," she says, not believing it for a moment.

"Swedish twins," House says happily. "One of them had pierced nipples."

Cuddy is shaking her head.

Something doesn't add up.

To coin a phrase.

"Or maybe they were Danish," House says meditatively. "Danish is great first thing in the morning. Something you can really sink your teeth into. You know, they had a _great_ buffet at the conference."

"I don't buy it," she says.

"No? Well, that's the whole _point,_ isn't it? Getting a freebie? So, since we actually came out ahead here-"

He shifts his weight, leaning on his cane, telegraphing his readiness to be gone.

"'Professonal expenses' was the subject. You can either justify them or reimburse the hospital."

House settles back and begins twirling his cane. He only does that when he's feeling particularly self-satisfied. "I was wined and dined and seduced. I made arrangements to reciprocate."

"I find that hard to believe."

"I have witnesses."

"To your encounter with the Swedish stewardess."

"You're the one who said it was a Swedish stewardess."

She plays back the conversation in her head.

'Stewardess' was her contribution. He'd said Swedish twins.

Or Danish.

She waves her hand in agitation.

He's starting to get to her.

"Look, it doesn't matter _who_ she was. The point is, I don't believe she exists. And even if she did-"

House is wearing his blandest expression.

She knows that look too well.

She's just made another assumption that - somehow - is wrong. And he's planning to nail her with it.

Somehow.

"-I _really_ don't believe that you'd buy her four bottles of bourbon and treat her to an evening of porno movies."

"Sounds more like something Wilson would like," House agrees innocently.

"You're not telling me you called Wilson and made him drive up to New York to keep you company," she says, although House is capable of doing exactly that.

And suddenly it falls into place.

"You aren't telling me you had a _man_ in your hotel room?"

"You sound like an outraged spinster, and we both know you aren't wearing any underwear." House smiles in that bright-eyed infuriating way that tells her he knows he's hijacked the conversation once again.

#

He thinks that will probably do it.

It's not that Cuddy's getting harder to fool - he's never kidded himself that he fools Cuddy. More a case of either staying out of her way until whatever she's decided to carry on about becomes a non-issue, or making it into so much trouble that letting him have his own way becomes the lesser of two evils.

Or - third choice - giving her enough time to realize the problem isn't actually a problem.

This isn't really a problem. It's pocket change. She'll figure that out soon enough, and meanwhile, he's not in the Clinic, so there's no real downside.

Cuddy is regarding him with narrowed eyes and a faint feral smile.

"Decided to bat for the other team, have you?"

"Not really. Oh come on, Cuddy. Just what have I admitted here? We should probably rule out sheep, though. They aren't heavy drinkers, as a rule. But oh let's see, we've ruled out stewardesses and we've ruled out Wilson, so what does that leave? Boys Night Out."

He smiles at her, because he's certain now that she won't believe a single word he says. And that's when it's the most fun: telling the truth and having people think you're lying. Almost as much fun as lying and getting away with it.

"He bought me dinner, of course. I wouldn't want you to think I'm easy. We went to my room – did I mention he had a cane fixation? Naturally I told him you share it. And then we-"

"Stop," Cuddy says, throwing her hands in the air. "I don't want to know."

"So there's really no need to go on about a few incidental expenses," House finishes triumphantly, pushing himself to his feet.

"Stop," she says again, in an entirely different tone of voice.

"I'm late," he says. "Clinic. Very important. Can't keep all the dear little patients waiting."

"$948.52," she answers.

He frowns.

"It's an enchanting fairytale, and with a little more time I could probably figure out who's the prince and who's the frog and where the two of you buried Sleeping Beauty. But it doesn't actually change anything, you know."

House regards her, slightly off-balance for the first time.

"I tell you the most intimate details of my sex life and it doesn't change anything?"

"It doesn't change the fact that you're trying to defraud this hospital."

"Oh, yeah, like that's a first."

#

She simply stares at him, and he's seen kinder expressions across the poker table. From strangers in biker bars, with several hundred dollars and the keys to a custom Harley in the pot waiting on a turn of the cards.

He'd expected his story of male hookers would derail her. It nearly did. Just bizarre enough to be true.

"What is it that you want?" he demands. On the edge of, oh, not really losing his temper. But this is going to be more work than he thought it would be, and he doesn't like that.

He doesn't like having to push Cuddy around. It's too much fun. He's never absolutely sure where the buttons are, and if they'll work the same way every time. Grab her by the hospital when they're fighting over a patient; that's simple and elemental. But it's like clubbing baby seals. There's no particular challenge to it, and you wind up with a lot of blood on your hands.

That is, when he doesn't end up as the seal.

Something like this, though, which is pretty much meaningless (he's not going to pay the damned bill and she can't make him) is purely a game. Nobody's going to die while they square off like Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Searching out each others' weaknesses. Striking sparks and body-blows.

He loves manipulating people. Hates it when it's easy.

Most people are easy. The pretty boy in New York was. He wanted too much. Pain and absolution. It made him easy to trap.

Guilt will make Cameron do anything. He knew that about her within five minutes of meeting her. Cameron will do anything to be loved, and since no matter what happens, Cameron will never _feel_ loved, Cameron can always be had.

Piss Chase off, and you get his best work. Always. Because Chase is always trying to prove himself, and of course he'll never succeed, since the one he's trying to prove himself to is Robert Chase.

Foreman is a little more complicated, though not much more. He's got that 'cooler than thou' ghetto boy thing going. But he so loves to be right, and to fit in with all the pretty white folks. What Foreman really wants is power, but he doesn't want anyone to know, and isn't that a crying shame? If he'd just stop caring what anybody thinks of him, he could do a lot better for himself. Everyone wants power. Why should Foreman be ashamed of being just like everyone else? Except that deep down, Foreman wants to be unique. Which means that most of the time, House can play him like a piano.

Wilson just annoys the hell out of him. Little Jimmy, friend to all the world, a bottomless well of compassion to the walking dead. Even oncologists don't talk about curing cancer; they only talk about remission. Temporary truces with time and disease. Oncology is a loser specialty, one without victories. There are days when Wilson reminds House of a suicidal kitten, and annoys him just as much. And days when he welcomes the irritation. Manipulating Wilson is no challenge at all. The challenge lies in keeping from being drawn into Wilson's endless cycle of _giving._

But Cuddy is different. He knows what she wants, and he knows what he wants, but as for how to get _her_ to do what _he_ wants … that particular - and lovely - fortress is very well defended.

It always was.

Challenges are interesting.

#

"What do I _want?"_ Cuddy asks. "I want my money." She knows her voice is rising to an outraged squeak. She simply can't help it. Time cannot wither not custom stale House's ability to destroy sanity and composure wherever he goes.

"It isn't your money," House replies confidentially, in the tones of one gently breaking tragic news to a small child. "You see, that's your problem. You're taking this far too personally."

But the hospital and its cash-flow _is_ her problem.

"I don't suppose you actually care what it takes to keep this place running?" she asks tightly.

"No," House answers with magnificent simplicity. "Hey, I've got a great idea. Why don't we charge for medical services? You know, bill patients for treatment? Who knows? It might catch on."

She picks up a pen, drums it idly on the printout from the hotel. "Was he pretty?"

"Who?" House blinks and frowns at the abrupt change of subject.

"Your boyfriend. You don't want to discuss these charges, so I thought we might as well discuss your sex life."

"I'd rather discuss yours."

"And I'd rather you wrote me a check."

"Now, see, _that_ would be unethical. And get us both into trouble."

She sighs, leaning back in her chair, gazing at the ceiling, tapping the pen against her lower lip.

"Of course," she says musingly, "maybe there wasn't any sex. Because you didn't _pay_ for sex, and I have a marvelous imagination, but even I cannot imagine you having sex with another doctor."

"No, not a doctor," House says with fulsome – and entirely feigned – sympathy. "Professional graverobber. Worked with his hands. Fascinating case. Lied to me the whole time."

"'Case'?" she asks, sitting up.

"Neurological damage. He said he'd been kidnapped by aliens, but you know what archaeologists are like. It was probably sunstroke. Well, that part of it, anyway. Can I go now? I'm sure you have something really boring to do that doesn't involve me. And - gosh - rounds."

"You don't do rounds. And I could be persuaded to allow these charges," she says.

"In exchange for?"

He's suspicious now. But it's too late. An archaeologist who attended the Symposium on Exotic Diseases? There can't be too many of those. She could probably actually turn up a name if she dug. Maybe this semi-mythical person was even one of the presenters.

"Extra clinic hours."

"Never."

"It's not that I think you'd _mind_ if this little story about the Symposium gets out," she begins idly, staring into his eyes and running her pearls through her fingers. "complete with names. I'm sure it would only add to the luster of your legend. The great Greg House, irresistible to women _and_ men."

#

He glares. He's trapped himself neatly. Damned if he agrees, and damned if he disagrees.

Pretty, clever, Cuddy.

_'Complete with names.'_

He does not, actually, put it past Cuddy to be able to find Dr. Daniel Jackson's name. There can't have been that many archaeologists attending the Symposium.

_'I work for the government, doing cryptographic analysis.'_

People like Dr. Jackson come with minders. And apparently - in this case - boyfriends.

_'It’s not the sex as much as the talking.'_

He really doesn't want to meet Dr. Jackson's boyfriend. Or any of the other cloak-and-dagger military types who will come sniffing around PPTH because Cuddy starts poking around. It would be tedious and annoying, and not quite worth the look of shock on her face when her office started filling up with uniforms.

"Blackmail would only cheapen our relationship, Cuddy."

She smiles, thinking she's won on points. Too bad there were three people playing. He came for a chess match and found out the game was poker instead. Aces high, queen in the hole.

"Who said anything about blackmail? Haven't we been talking about sex? Now that we know you've actually broadened your dating options instead of just talking about them, it would be a shame to keep the details secret. Don't you think? Ten more hours."

"You are a vicious, cruel, devious woman with no morals. Five."

"Eight."

"Damn you, woman. You have the soul of an accountant."

"Do you suppose he'll call?" she asks archly, twisting her pearls. "Maybe he'll send you roses. I'd hold out for expensive chocolates, myself; you don't want anyone to think you're easy, though God knows that would take a leap of faith. Eight hours, House. Be on time. And this is over."

#

His cane drums a muffled tattoo of exasperation on her rug, and she knows she's won.

"By the end of the quarter," she adds.

A wordless growl is her only answer.

He stalks out of her office – the counterweighted doors don't slam, which she knows is always a sore point with him – and she watches until he's out of sight.

Less than a thousand dollars.

A drop in the bucket, really.

It won't keep the hospital running for ten minutes. Or cover the cost of even one of the battery of tests House's department is constantly running on their admits, searching for the toxic needle in the haystack of the human body.

But it's a way of keeping score in the eternal game of Cuddy versus House. A game – bloodsport, really – in which she doesn't dare fall too far behind.

In the inverse pantheon which House has enshrined to receive his greatest measures of contempt, there are three ultimate places of dishonor.

The stupid, failures, and those who lose.

She has no intention of joining their number.

#

Long after the workday is over, he opens the door of 221B and regards the woman on his doorstep. She's from the service.

He has a profile on file there; they know what he wants when he calls. Coltish brown-eyed girls with shoulder-length straight dark hair. Never mind who they resemble. Fuck the subconscious. It's what gets him off.

Tonight he asked for something different.

Still brunette, of course. House distrusts blondes. Soft and brittle, like razor blades in custard. Now brunettes … you can sink your teeth into a brunette.

Tonight? Long curling hair. Big rack. Blue eyes.

And wearing pink.

She's wearing a skinny little pink tank top that looks like it would fit her sister, if her sister were a backward twelve-year-old. There's a promising black lace brassiere beneath it. She has an enormous bag over her shoulder. They always do. He sometimes wonders what they keep in it, but not very much.

He steps back.

She regards him and the living room beyond with a faintly nervous smile. Licks her lips and takes a deep breath and strides across his threshold.

"Oh my god you wouldn't believe the day I had today. Do you know how hard it is to set pure quartz on fire? Do you know what temperature pure quartz _burns_ at?"

House hates it when they talk.

"Over eight thousand Kelvin. And I don't care," House says. "Less talk. More action."

When they talk, he can't pretend they're someone else.

###

**Author's Note:**

> I know I porked House canon on this one. My beta vanished after saying (distractedly) that it was "fine" and it was only after it was published that I witted wot I had done. By which time it was kind of water under the bridge and all that. But I'm still going to post it here for completeness sake. And also because there's a sentence or two I'm still fond of...


End file.
